GraniteGrok

Obama's own book, Dreams From My Father, said that he always sought out the socialists and Marxists when he moved from school to school during college.  Given the influence of his self-avowed Communist mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, while he was growing up in Hawaii, I am not surprised at all at his tendency to want to make Government / the collective the locus of everyone's life instead of extolling the individual.

Socialism has been tried here in America before.  The earliest versions of socialism / communal living did not work out well at all (as one can see from one of my Thanksgiving Day posts).  That said, I was not aware how many times people thought that they could make it work (misguided fools)!

This post by Ryan Seifert over at American Thinker has a whole lot more on this:

There seems to be a need in American society to have to relearn the same hard lessons over and over again, regardless of whether the results were seen on the other side of the planet or suffered through by our own people.

We're living in a country that elected a President that believes in redistributing wealth. He's mentioned this himself, from the "Joe the Plumber" incident[i] to his critique[ii] of the failures of the civil rights movement. Whether you call it Socialism, Communism, Marxism, or by its simpler name, theft, they are all part of the same economic system that destroys private property and puts everything in central control of the state.

The lesson we, and the rest of the world, seems to fail to learn is how socially and economically destructive this sort of system is. The problem is, these lessons don't have to be learned from studying the histories of far off lands, for we have numerous examples of collectivist/socialist experiments here at home.

• Jamestown
• Pilgrims (my example) 
• New Haven - 1825 by Robert Owen
• Another set of communes by Charles Fourier (none last more than 12 years)
• 1804 - Harmony in Pennsylvania (which was moved, sold, and died later)
• 1841 - The "Perfectionists" failed
  

He also brought up one line of thought that is utterly 1984 Doublespeak in its dunderheadedness - slavery is complete freedom:

George Fitzhugh, an influence on Berry, actually argued that slave labor was preferable because the slaves were ultimately free. It was property owners and free laborers that were the slaves. He advocated that taking decision-making out of the hands of individuals made the African slaves better off than free whites and claimed that not only all blacks, but most whites too, should be slaves.[xiv] His theory was ultimately squashed with the support and ratification of the 13th and 14th Amendments, which not only freed the slaves but also established they had constitutionally protected private property rights.

Ryan's lesson?

These few examples, and there are more out there, show how American culture even before the Civil War (or the War of Northern Aggression, depending on your location) tried communal living and centrally planned economic models. Despite the good intentions of the people involved, they always fail because of the inherent flaws in Socialism. Unfortunately, given the reach of the federal government and current make-up of the executive and legislative branches, we are set to learn this lesson the hard way. Again.

The moral of the story?  Each time, Government or the collective is placed in a importance and priority above that of the individual, it fails.  Socialism believes that altruism can reign supreme over long periods of time, that we can and should put our fellow man and society as a whole ahead of one's own interests - and it is wrong.  Too often, people game the socialist system because of their own self-interest, which is the problem.  No, not the gaming, but that the role of self-interest is channeled negatively.  Capitalism allows for the self-interest to work for positive outcomes, not only for the individual and one's immediate family, but for society as a whole.